Trump the hawk

Syria, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia: Donald Trump is prepared to take military action in, and against, them all. It thrills him, and pleases his supporters. It is also already causing chaos with unforeseeable global chain effects.

Rising tensions: South Korean civil defence drill in Seoul as Pyongyang denounces annual joint military exercises by the US and South Korea

Jung Yeon-Je · AFP · Getty

The cruise missile attack launched by US destroyers on 7 April against an airbase in western Syria in response to the use of chemical weapons, which most UN Security Council members attribute to Syrian government forces, was widely described in the US media as the first major use of military force by Donald Trump since assuming the presidency. The attack, involving 59 Tomahawk missiles, certainly represented a significant use of force, causing extensive (if not calamitous) damage to the Syrian base. But, more accurately, it should be viewed as the second such action by Trump, following an ill-fated raid by US Special Forces in Yemen on 29 January. And even more importantly, it should be viewed as the prelude to further exercises of military might, each likely to prove more risky and ferocious than the one before. Indeed, Trump has already signalled his intent to employ force more aggressively, by deploying an aircraft carrier battle group to waters off Korea and approving the use of America’s most powerful non-nuclear weapon — dubbed the ‘mother of all bombs’ — in an attack on ISIS strongholds in Afghanistan.

Throughout the presidential campaign, Trump made it clear that he was perfectly comfortable with the notion of using military force to advance US interests abroad, despite chiding President Obama and Hillary Clinton (then secretary of state) for involving the US in protracted wars in the Middle East. Last September, asked how he would respond to an incident in which Iranian naval craft veered dangerously close to American ships in the Persian Gulf, he told reporters: ‘With Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats, and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn’t make, they will be shot out of the water’.

In the few months since he has occupied the White House, moreover, Trump has demonstrated ever-increasing comfort with the use of force, giving his top military officials — ‘my generals’ as he (...)

Michael T Klare is professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst (Massachusetts) and the author of The Race For What’s Left: the Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources, Picador/Metropolitan Books, New York, 2012.